hem

«Sometimes I think honesty is a technique, you know, Hemingway always talked about it, though he used the word «truthfully» instead—I don’t think he ever wrote «honestly», for obvious reasons, not to write anything «ghastly» like Orwell said could’ve been one, maybe not, Hem would never have listened to Georgie O.—but it’s such and integral part of the early career of a writer … well, really, of his life before he started his career as a writer—I think when you aspire to be a writer you start out just wanting to be honest—and I don’t think you can start up a head of steam unless you’re at least a little honest about yourself—that once you’ve got the career and you get very good at it, at all the different permutations of honesty, at telling it straight, or telling it circuitously to get at a bigger truth, at lying … you don’t wanna go back, you distrust those feelings now, you think maybe you were just drinking too much coffee to stop yourself from going hungry. «Hunger was good discipline?» Where’s the beef? You know, now you think honesty was just that, being really really hungry and not being able to afford a hot lunch.»